Every fall, a character shows up on porches, in store windows and on classroom bulletin boards who’s more funny than frightening: plaid shirt, battered hat, straw poking out of the sleeves. The scarecrow has become as much a part of Halloween as the pumpkin or the witch. And yet it spent centuries out in the fields, guarding the crops, far from any holiday. How did it get here?
It came in with autumn. In the United States, from the early twentieth century, postcards and seasonal decorations gathered up everything that smelled of harvest —pumpkins, corn, straw— and the scarecrow came along in the bundle. Then stories, movies and front porches adopted it, and along the way it crossed paths with another seasonal character: Jack O’Lantern, the one with the glowing pumpkin. Here’s its story, sorted into what’s known and what’s just told.
To read aloud (ages 4 to 8)
Once upon a time there was a figure made of old clothes and a torn hat. Its job was to watch the cornfield so the birds wouldn’t eat the seeds. One day, people from town thought it looked so friendly that they took it home to decorate their front door in the fall. And that’s how the keeper of the field became a guest at Halloween.
What was a scarecrow for?
Protecting the crops. A cross of sticks, clothes nobody wore anymore, a hat and sometimes a painted face: the idea was that birds would see “someone” in the field and go eat somewhere else.
In English, the word scarecrow could also mean the person who did that job: the figure and the field hand shared a name.
Every language gave it a name, and nearly all of them say the same thing: its job is to scare.
| Where | What it’s called | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| English | scarecrow | scare-crow |
| Spanish | espantapájaros | scare-birds |
| French | épouvantail | the thing that frightens |
| Italian | spaventapasseri | scare-sparrows |
| Scotland | tattie bogle, tattie doolie | tattie is potato; a bogle is a goblin |
| Wales | bwgan brain | “crow ghost” |
| Japan | kakashi | scarecrow; in the fall it has its own festival, the kakashi matsuri |
Today they’re rarely used on farms: automatic noisemakers and netting replaced them. And just as the fields stopped needing them, towns and cities started wanting them.
How old are scarecrows?
Very old, though they’re hard to date. A rag figure hung on a pole doesn’t survive: it rots, burns or falls apart in the rain. So the firmest clues are written words.
Most of the uses of scarecrow recorded in the great historical dictionary of English, the Oxford English Dictionary, date from the sixteenth century on. The Welsh folklorist Juliette Wood, who studied the history of the scarecrow, points out that they were almost certainly in use earlier.
One of those early uses is Shakespeare’s. In Henry VI, Part 1, the soldier Talbot proudly reports what the enemy called him: “the terror of the French, / The scarecrow that affrights our children so.” Even then the word could be a joke: a scarecrow was more laughable than terrifying.
What gets repeated without a source: online you’ll read that the Egyptians made the first scarecrows, or that the Greeks carved figures of the god Priapus to guard their gardens “around 2500 BC.” We couldn’t find a serious source documenting either. In Priapus’s case the dates don’t work: his cult appears in Greece more than two thousand years later.
Scarecrow myths: what’s told and what’s known
Quite a lot. And many of these ideas are repeated so often they sound like history. Here they are, with what people who checked them say:
| The story goes that… | What’s known |
|---|---|
| The Celts put up scarecrows at Samhain to keep spirits away | Some say so, mostly on blogs and costume-shop websites. No document supports it |
| In the Middle Ages, scarecrows had turnip heads and were burned in a ritual at harvest’s end | Many probably did end up in end-of-season bonfires, like any old rag. There’s no evidence of a ritual (Wood) |
| The straw figures burned at some festivals stand in for ancient human sacrifices | This was a very popular idea among nineteenth-century folklorists, especially after James Frazer. Most anthropologists and folklorists today consider it unsupported (Wood) |
| The scarecrow has been a Halloween symbol since ancient times | It joined Halloween a little over a century ago, through the imagery of autumn. That’s the next section |
Why do these stories keep circulating? Juliette Wood puts it nicely: we like to connect the past to the present in ways that feel true, even when there’s no bridge. A straw figure in a field looks ancient, and that’s enough for us to invent it an origin.
How did the scarecrow get to Halloween?
In layers, over a little more than a hundred years, just like Halloween as a whole. Each layer has a date:
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1852 | Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes “Feathertop”: a New England witch, Mother Rigby, builds a scarecrow with a pumpkin head, in which she “cut two holes for the eyes and a slit for the mouth,” and brings it to life. Witch, scarecrow and carved pumpkin, nearly half a century before Oz |
| From 1900 | In the United States, postcards and seasonal decorations are printed for Halloween and Thanksgiving. The scarecrow appears as a friendly figure, usually a straw boy in a hat |
| 1900 | L. Frank Baum publishes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The Scarecrow who wants a brain becomes the most famous scarecrow in the world |
| 1904 | In The Marvelous Land of Oz, Baum invents Jack Pumpkinhead: a figure of sticks with a carved pumpkin for a head, made to scare a witch. Scarecrow and jack-o’-lantern in a single character |
| 1922 | The Scarecrow: A Halloween Fantasy, a one-act play by J. A. Ferguson, is published in Scotland. The scarecrow now has Halloween in its title |
| 1936 | In England, Worzel Gummidge, a talking scarecrow, becomes a book, and years later a TV series |
| 1940s | The Scarecrow appears as a villain in Batman comics. Its scary side begins |
| Late twentieth century | Scarecrow festivals multiply in towns across the United States, Canada, England and Australia. Many fall in October, alongside Halloween |
| Today | Plastic, store-bought scarecrows on porches and lawns from October into November |
On the household calendar, the scarecrow is a bridge. In the United States it goes up with Halloween at the end of October, stays for Thanksgiving at the end of November, and then makes way for the snowman. In Canada, where Thanksgiving falls on the second Monday of October, it often arrives even earlier and simply stays through Halloween.
What does it have to do with Jack O’Lantern?
A lot in looks, little in substance. Both sometimes wear a pumpkin for a head, both are out and about in October, and both have a bit of the trickster in them. That’s why they’re so easy to mix up, and why stories have put them together more than once.
But they come from different places:
| The scarecrow | Jack O’Lantern | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A farm object, made to do a job | A character from legend, and the lantern named after him |
| Where it comes from | From planting, almost anywhere there are birds | From folktales of Ireland and Britain about a trickster who fooled the devil |
| What it does | Guards the field without moving | Wanders between heaven and hell carrying a light |
| Its head | Rag or burlap; the pumpkin head came with the stories | First he carries his light in a turnip or a pumpkin; over time the head itself becomes the lantern |
| When it joined Halloween | With the imagery of autumn, from 1900 | With the carved pumpkin of North America, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries |
Where they touch most is in two storybook characters: Hawthorne’s Feathertop (1852), a scarecrow with a carved pumpkin head, and Baum’s Jack Pumpkinhead (1904), a figure of sticks with a carved pumpkin head. Both are scarecrows from the neck down and Jack O’Lantern from the neck up. Juliette Wood explains it this way: the mischievous, trickster side of these characters is exactly what makes it so easy to blend the scarecrow with seasonal figures like Jack O’Lantern.
The full legend of Jack, with its versions and what’s known about it, has its own article.
Why are scarecrows a little bit creepy?
Because they look like a person and aren’t one. They have clothes, a hat and sometimes a face, but they’re made of rags and straw. That “almost someone” feeling is the same shiver you get from dolls, statues or Frankenstein’s monster, who was also put together from spare parts.
Children’s stories almost always put the scarecrow on the good side: the Scarecrow of Oz keeps Dorothy company, and in many stories the figure comes to life to help. Horror movies use exactly the opposite. Both roads start from the same place: a figure that suddenly moves.
For a conversation at home or in class: what would you give your scarecrow to make it funny, and what would make it scary?
How do you make a scarecrow at home?
A small one, for a table or a windowsill, comes together in an afternoon.
Materials: two wooden craft sticks or dowels (one long, one short), yarn or string, an old sock, stuffing (cotton balls, paper or fabric scraps), fabric scraps or a doll’s shirt, raffia or straw, a small paper hat, and markers.
- The cross. Tie the short stick across the long one, a third of the way down from the top, wrapping the yarn in an X.
- The head. Stuff the toe of the sock, tie it off and slide it over the top end. Draw the face with a marker: this is where you decide whether it’s funny or scary.
- The clothes. Dress the cross in the fabric or shirt. A piece of string at the waist holds it in place.
- The straw. Poke raffia or straw out of the sleeves, the collar and the hat.
- The name. Every scarecrow has one. Write it on a slip of paper and hang it on.
Questions
Is the scarecrow a Halloween symbol or a Day of the Dead symbol? Halloween’s, and above all autumn’s in North America. The Day of the Dead has its own symbols: the ofrenda, marigolds, sugar skulls. How the two holidays are alike and how they differ is in Halloween vs. Day of the Dead.
Do scarecrows actually scare birds? They work, up to a point: a figure that never moves stops being scary after a while. That’s why, as farms got bigger, they were gradually replaced by devices that make noise (Wood).
Was the Scarecrow of Oz the first storybook scarecrow? It’s the most famous, from 1900. There were scarecrows in stories and poems before it, including Hawthorne’s Feathertop; none became as well known.
If you want to follow the thread, the carved pumpkin has a similar history, with a legend of its own attached: the legend of the jack-o’-lantern. And for the bigger picture, there’s where Halloween came from.
Sources
- Juliette Wood, “‘The Great Scarecrow in Days Long Ago’: Gothic Myths and Family Festivals,” essay, 2007. PDF on the author’s website. Wood is a folklorist associated with Cardiff University and The Folklore Society. It’s an essay without peer review, and the most complete serious source we found on the subject.
- L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chicago, George M. Hill, 1900; and The Marvelous Land of Oz, Chicago, Reilly & Britton, 1904.
- William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 1, act I, scene 4.
- J. A. Ferguson, The Scarecrow: A Halloween Fantasy in One Act, London and Glasgow, 1922.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Feathertop: A Moralized Legend,” 1852; collected in Mosses from an Old Manse. Text on Project Gutenberg.
- Barbara Euphan Todd, Worzel Gummidge, the Scarecrow of Scatterbrook, 1936.
Written by the Idunn Editorial Team, with support from AI tools in the research and drafting.
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